by John Broich
Sabourri was quarantined in his place under the forecastle. A new nurse took John Shilston’s place, one of the Kroomen, which could only have swelled their reputation for fearlessness. Colomb and O’Connor made plans for what they would do should a third case of cholera appear, though there was little hope if that came to pass.
The next morning, John Shilston’s heart stopped beating. The wind died almost completely away, and Philip Colomb had the drummer beat to quarters. Colomb read prayers, and the body of good John Shilston was committed to the deep. That morning, too, men cleaning the gunner’s storeroom discovered a nest of termites. There was an infection in the body of the Dryad, and they worked to root it out. In the coming days Philip Colomb and the doctor visited Sabourri frequently. The boy seemed to collapse on himself. He tried to speak but could not, managing once to take the captain’s hand.
But Sabourri lived. And cholera did not cut down the crew; there were no more cases. In a little over a fortnight, the lookout raised the lights marking Bombay harbour in the dark before dawn. Dawn itself revealed sisters Nymphe and Daphne moored in the harbour. All was busy-ness and hurry in the days to come. The Dryad docked for extensive refitting and her crew left her to sling their hammocks in a hulk for the time being. Sabourri was housed with a kindly merchant in the port.
At some point, though, the boy left the house and plunged into the living current of the great city. A search was made by the bosun and some hands, but it appeared the Sabourri did not want to be found. And so the boy, having escaped slavery, cholera, and the bosun of the Dryad, charted his own course.4
HMS Forte, Suez, Red Sea, November 1869
In November 1869 Leopold Heath attended the opening of the Suez Canal at Ismailia, Egypt. The opening of the canal, creating a more direct sea route between Britain and India, was of massive importance to the British empire. Maintaining the integrity of this route would be a major responsibility for the Royal Navy’s Bombay station, and that meant maintaining peace and security in the Red Sea, Persian Gulf and Arabian Sea. War, piracy and lawlessness were a threat to the flow of trade.
At the ceremony Heath shared a shaded pavilion with some of those who made the world turn: earls, lords, baronets, ladies. The British ambassador to Egypt was there, and the powerful commander-in-chief of the Mediterranean, Sir Alexander Milne (though his deep-draft iron-clad flagship was not, since it, like Forte, did not dare enter the canal). Famous British engineers Hawksley and Bateman were there to honour the French engineer de Lesseps. Leaders of the Chambers of Commerce of England and Scotland’s industrial and trading capitals stood by. Through this new route would flow their raw cotton from India, tea and silk from China, ivory and cloves from Zanzibar. On a grander pavilion nearby sat a sparkling covey of kings and queens and princes.
After all of the goings-on of speeches, imperial visits and flotillas, Leopold Heath turned his attention to his squadron, and to the storm that had now fully broken over it. He had watched the barometer fall since late spring, since he and his captains had burned more slavers than the station ever had before. Now, he realised that he had been sailing in the eye of a typhoon for a long time without knowing it. London had joined Bombay in scrutinising their actions, and London was not pleased. The Foreign Secretary accused the spiders of burning ships on mere suspicion alone – and repeatedly. Among others, he cited the case of a capture made by Colomb and the Dryad that spring, a case in which Philip Colomb had found only one captive on board, a boy of about ten. The child had been an obvious abductee from Zanzibar, speaking no Arabic though the dhow’s captain had claimed he was a crewmember, and was most likely a side-speculation of the captain, intended for sale in the Persian Gulf. But the opinion of the Foreign Office was that the word of an African child should not be taken over the dhow captain. The dhow should have been towed to a port to appear before a Vice-Admiralty judge, the ship’s captain appearing in order to defend himself, if there was any reasonable doubt about the case.
Heath received a copy of a report from one of the Treasury’s lawyers, Henry Rothery, counselling the government that the squadron was running away with its zealotry. Among others, this lawyer cited Edward Meara and the Nymphe’s capture of a dhow at Kiswara on the coast in April. There had been six enslaved Africans on board who had told the Nymphe’s interpreter that they were to be sold at a port down the coast. But the lawyer wrote that Meara’s condemnation of the dhow was a sham. These slaves were the personal slaves of the crew or passengers on the ship, and while they might have reported that they were to be sold on the east coast, this was nonsense: that was like sailing coals to Newcastle, Rothery argued. Slaves sailed east and north from the coast, not south. The slaves were lying, he wrote, to get out of their situation.
Forte sailed down the long Red Sea and across the Arabian Sea to Ceylon, where it picked up supplies at the small dockyard there, then back west to Bombay for the squadron’s winter rendezvous. At dawn on New Year’s Day she passed past the white Colaba lighthouse with its large Union Jack flying above and eased to her mooring place in Bombay harbour. She found the sisters Daphne, Dryad and Nymphe already there.
There Heath found a stack of correspondence from London: letters from multiple ministries, the report by the Foreign Office committee that met to rein in the squadron, a new set of slave trade suppression instructions written by politicians and clerks. New prohibitions, that is, and Heath had the task of telling his captains that they were hamstrung, at best – their campaign against the slave trade, he feared, might be dead.
Two years before he had left Bombay for Abyssinia at the head of an invasion. There he did what he did best: he moved ships and men rationally; followed the most direct route between order and execution; understood his orders and knew to whom he was responsible; had the ships needed to complete his work. As he had waited for the soldiers, marines and sailors to finish their work in the hills of Abyssinia, he had started planning his next campaign, analysing the possibilities of a coherent, consistent anti-slave trade strategy. He thought that he understood his straightforward orders: to fight slavers. He thought he had time to see the fruit of his new strategy, two or three years, perhaps, two or three slaving seasons. But it turned out that he and his captains – dedicated men, energetic men, he believed – had had just one year.
The soft-handed men of officialdom wrote that Heath’s squadron was ‘inspiring alarm and mistrust’ in East Africa and Arabia, wringing their hands. Good, thought Heath, let the alarm sound that if you carry slaves on these coasts you risk having your ship burned to the waterline by the Royal Navy. Let slavers look at the horizon with mistrust, fearing that the masts of a British cruiser lay just under it, with your ship boarded, wares taken out and sold, the profits going to reward your foe. He and his men had burned or condemned scores of ships, 10,000 tons of shipping, in a year. They had lifted over a thousand men, women and children from the decks or stinking holds of slavers in 1869 alone. And he was proud.
Leopold Heath knew that the new rules from London would cast a chill on the squadron. More than that, they served notice that its civilian overseers considered the squadron half-lawless, its officers in danger of having their captures and condemnations of cargo overturned, with their personal money on the line. They were in danger of having reprimands placed in the margins of their service records, their careers jeopardised. The new rules, to Heath’s mind, were a threat to any officer who showed too much zeal.
And in the days to come the commodore was proved right. Captain Sulivan made his thoughts clear before he left for England. The squadron was being thrust in the pillory, a sign over them, Thus to any who interfere with the financial interests of India. While Philip Colomb thought the recriminations from political quarters unseemly and exasperating, especially when the work was as demanding and dangerous as wartime service, the captains on the station agreed that the new rules meant any of them taking slaves out of a ship carrying less than a crammed deck was risking himself and his senior officers.
Perhaps they were doing the Africans less than no good, either, given that a Vice-Admiralty judge like Dr Kirk might seek to have freed Africans restored to their abductors.
There were some consolations. Edward Meara could report the success of the Nymphe and Daphne at Bahrain, with peace restored and a prince amenable to British persuasion installed. This was, perhaps, a good development in their fight against the trade bound for the Persian Gulf. And Heath could give Captain Colomb the news that one of his Kroomen, Jim George, had received a medal from the Royal Humane Society for his rescue of dozens from a beach in May.
Leopold Heath kept his secretary busy, writing back to London, defending his captains against charges of near-renegadism. He warned his superiors what their new guidelines would mean for his efforts against the slave trade, telling them to expect far fewer captures in the future.5
CHAPTER 19
‘AFTER EVERY TEMPEST COME SUCH CALMS’
News of their work precedes the captains to Britain, to good effect
THEIR TIME on the station up, Meara departed for England in early spring 1870, Colomb late spring, and Heath in the summer, having been successfully checked by the government. Meara and the Nymphe had released over 400 people and discovered the illegal captivity of over 200 at Majunga, Madagascar; Colomb had released over 360; Heath released 80, and Sulivan took over 1,000 people out of slave ships in his longer period in the squadron.
Heath was right about what the new rules would mean for the fight against the slave trade. From 1870 the number of the squadron’s captures plummeted; while over 1,000 people were removed from slave ships in 1869, only 302 were in 1870, with most of those freed from a single slave ship. In the next two years numerous alleged slavers were absolved and recompensed by Dr Kirk and other judges because captains could not prove the captive Africans on board were being taken for sale. In several instances restitution required delivering people back into a state of slavery.
But what Heath and his squadron did not seem to know was that, while it was being checked, the squadron’s campaign made the news back in Britain. The newspapers retold stories of rescues, desperate fights and scenes of misery, often lightly re-working Leopold Heath’s official reports to the Admiralty to look like timely correspondents’ dispatches. And making the newspapers was key: from the 1850s the number of cheap newspapers in Britain increased dramatically; the majority of the middle class could read, and the illiterate often had opportunities to hear the newspaper read. Beginning after Sulivan and Daphne’s first successful experiment with laying traps at chokepoints in 1868, the squadron made headlines, with stories multiplying greatly after the successes of the full spider’s web in spring 1869.
The stories made good copy, with their Boy’s Own action – sailors clambering over the sides of slave ships to battle villains. And in a period when newspapers began to compete with each other to offer the most provocative images, the stories provided exciting material. In their depictions of Daphne’s men boarding a slaver at sea or the crew of the Nymphe cutting out a ship in Zanzibar harbour, illustrators let their imaginations run wild so that boardings looked like battles. Stories of the squadron’s work included descriptions of the brutalised and starving African kidnapees too: both lurid and genuinely heartrending. The steady stream of stories, often reproduced across many smaller provincial newspapers at the same time and totalling around sixty over three years, seemed to appeal to national pride in both originating the abolition movement and distinguishing what readers thought of as ‘the British race’ against ‘those barbarous and backwards races’ that engaged in the slave trade.
Readers’ eyes opened to a trade that thrived after the public thought West African trade was crushed, and to the way the British and Indians were either complicit or officially uncaring. This provided an opportunity for critics of the hands-off Gladstone government. Meanwhile, the Anti-Slavery Society spread the word in its publications, reporting on the hobbling of the squadron and on the censuring of his captains for protecting escapees. ‘REBUKE TO CAPTAIN SULIVAN’, it announced, describing how the Foreign Office reproved the Daphne’s captain for rescuing Mozambican runaways. Each story painfully exposed Britain’s moral liability in tolerating the legal trade between Zanzibar and the coast opposite.
The force of these reports and criticisms was multiplied by the unexpected discovery that David Livingstone was alive in 1869 and the mission sent to find him in 1871. Livingstone served as a sort of prick to the conscience of the nation, with the Pall Mall Gazette writing that he might be disappointed to find that his country had not acted against the trade in his absence but had, in fact, officially looked the other way.1
Penny Illustrated Paper, November 1868
The horrible traffic has not yet ceased. It is an exciting chase of a slaver that forms the subject of one of our illustrations. The zealous activity of our jack tars on such an occasion is well depicted. Gratifying it is to think that their zeal has not been thrown away, but that they have succeeded in rescuing a goodly number of slaves from the hands of their barbarous gaolers.
Penny Illustrated Paper, November 1868
The Illustrated London News, February 1869
Illustrated London News, February 1869
THE CUTTER OF HMS DAPHNE CAPTURING A SLAVE-DHOW OFF BRORA
Reading Mercury, September 1869
Letters received from Zanzibar speak of the activity of the slave trade upon the east coast of Africa, and likewise mention the strenuous efforts of her Majesty’s cruisers to suppress it. The Arabs have lost a thousand slaves in the last three months …
Christian Observer, October 1869
So far as the West Coast of Africa is concerned … the African Slave Trade is a thing of the past. But while this happy result is chronicled concerning the old Atlantic Slave Trade, the annual reports of our Consul at Zanzibar, and the despatches of the naval officers in command of the few vessels which form the East African Squadron, tell a very different story. … From these reports … we learn some particulars of the … evils and misery inflicted on that hapless land.
Morning Post, October 1869
Convictions as to the safety of Dr Livingstone have now been confirmed by the intelligence received only a few days since from Bombay.
… The motives which chiefly induced him … consisting in the ardent desire cherished by the great traveller to continue his crusades against the slave trade still extensively carried on in the south-eastern districts and to follow up the important discoveries made by the late captain Speke and his comrade Major Grant.
Penny Illustrated Newspaper, December 1869
A BLOW FOR FREEDOM
Our Jack Tars are happily engaged in no war with the enemies of their native land, but they have this year struck more than one good blow against the inhuman slavers who still carry on their infamous trade on the east coast of Africa. The crew of her majesty’s ship Nymph, Captain Meara, have in particular distinguished themselves.
Mission Life, January 1870
One thousand slaves have been liberated during the last three months, and the dhows containing them have been destroyed. … In the meantime, we trust that some of the entanglements at present surrounding the question (and also our efforts) may be swept away, and that the attention which our Government has centred on the abominable slave trade, as it exists in the Sultan of Zanzibar’s dominion, will not prove abortive.
Western Times, May 1870
ABORIGINES PROTECTION SOCIETY – The thirty-fourth annual meeting of this society was held on Wednesday evening at the London Tavern. Sir Charles W. Dilkie, Bart., M.P. presided. Mr. F.W. Chesson, the secretary, read the annual report. … Sir T.F. Buxton, Bart., in moving the adoption of the report urged that vigorous measures should be adopted for the suppression of the Zanzibar slave trade, for which purpose it was our right and duty to interfere.
Pall Mall Gazette, May 1871
We shall rejoice to welcome Dr. Livingstone back to England; but we fear that the traveller�
��s own joy will be somewhat impaired on learning that during his lengthened absence little of nothing has been done in the matter he has most at heart. The slave trade on the east coast of Africa flourishes in spite of the numerous despatches that have passed between the English Government and its representative at Zanzibar. It is true that we have a treaty with the sultan, but by one of its articles we have bound ourselves not to interfere with domestic slavery.
Anti-Slavery Reporter, July 1871
BRITAIN A PARTICIPANT IN THE SLAVE-TRADE
Is this to be the lamentable result of our long and arduous agitation on behalf of outraged humanity – that Great Britain shall, in this era of civilisation, be stigmatised before the nations as a co-partner with Zanzibar in this infernal work of making merchandise of our fellow-men?
Anti-Slavery Reporter, July 1871
Restricted in powers, and discouraged in their work, some of our best officials in those slave-holding and slave-trading regions seem to have lost some patience and almost all hope of witnessing the extinction of the accursed system.
We hope, however, that the Committee of the House of Commons on the East African Slave-trade may prove the commencement of a new and effective system of British legislative action. We are persuaded that the national sentiment and will on this point are unchanged; and publicity will materially aid in forming and calling forth such an unequivocal expression of this that willing statesmen will be encouraged, and reluctant statesmen be compelled, to take decisive action in the matter.2
The presiding government of the day, William Gladstone’s, was of the school that looked to commerce, Christianity and civilisation to eventually starve the slave trade. Besides, even Leopold Heath and other supporters of strong measures admitted that at their best the Royal Navy only diverted a fraction of those carried to sale from slavery. So why, multiple Liberal ministers asked, spend so much money on the blockade and the Zanzibar consulate? In its advice to Gladstone, the Treasury cited the expense of the Royal Navy presence, but also cautioned what success would require. Was Britain prepared to be a solo police force on that coast since, as it appeared, the USA and Europe were unwilling to join the effort? And if the sultan of Zanzibar and other regional rulers absolutely refused to shut down their slave markets, asked the Treasury, was Gladstone’s ‘government prepared to reduce their territories to the condition of the protected states of India, or to go even further, and absolutely annex them’? Would justice be purchased through the expansion of the British empire?
